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of information from gossip he’d heard all day long on the street—somebody had taken it into his head to blow a dock and the surrounding West Side area, it seemed, and for a moment Carroll pondered a connection between Hussein Moussa and the events on the Hudson River.
    Arch Carroll had been ramrodding the Anti-Terrorist Division of the DIA for almost four years now. In that span of time only a few of the mass murderers he’d learned about had gotten to him emotionally and caused him to lose his usual policeman’s objectivity.
    Hussein Moussa was one of those few.
    The Lebanese Butcher liked to torture. The Butcher apparently liked to kill. The Butcher enjoyed maiming innocent civilians …
    So Carroll didn’t particularly want Moussa dead, as he studied the Sinbad Star Restaurant Carroll wanted the Butcher locked away for the rest of his natural life. Give the animal
lots
of time to
think
about what he’d done,
if he did think.
    From underneath newspapers and rags inside one of his shopping bags, Carroll began to slide out a heavy black metal object. He checked the firing chamber of a Browning automatic. He quickly fed in an autoloader.
    A stooped, ancient Hasid was passing by on the sidewalk. He stared incredulously at the street bum loading up a Browning handgun. His watery gray eyes almost fell out of his sagging face. The old man kept slowly walking away, looking back constantly as he moved. Then he cantered a little faster.
New York street bums with guns now!
The city was beyond all prayers, all possible hope.
    Carroll finally began to weave forward through the thick, fuzzy night traffic. He only half heard the bleating car horns and angry curses directed at him.
    He was drifting in and out of reality now; there was a little nausea involved here, too.
    A middle-aged couple was leaving the Sinbad, the fat wife pulling her red overcoat tight around bursting hips.
    She stared at Crusader Rabbit and the look said,
You don’t belong inside there, Mister. You know you don’t belong in there.
    Carroll pulled open the ornate red door the departing couple had let slam in his face.
    Hot garlicky air escaped as he started inside. A muffled
snick
of the Browning under his coat. A deep silent breath.
Okay, hotshot.
    The tiny restaurant was infinitely more crowded than it had looked from the outside. Arch Carroll cursed and felt his stomach drop. Every dining table was filled to overflowing.
    Six or seven more people, a group of boisterously laughing friends, were waiting in the front to be seated. Carroll pushed past them.
    Carroll’s eyes slowly drifted along the back of the crowded dining room. Only his eyes moved. His head was absolutely still.
    Hussein Moussa had already seen him.
    Even in the packed, bustling restaurant, the terrorist had noticed his entrance. The Butcher had been instinctively watching every person who came in from Atlantic Avenue.
    So had the restaurant’s owner. An enormous, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man, he charged forward now, an enraged bull guarding his herd at mealtime.
    “Get out of here! You get out, bum! Go now!” the owner screamed.
    Carroll tried to look desperately lost, dizzily confused, as surprised as everyone else that he was inside the small neighborhood restaurant.
    He stumbled over his own flopping black sneakers.
    He weaved sideways toward the left, before moving suddenly toward the right rear corner of the dining room.
    He hoped to God he looked cockeyed drunk and absolutely helpless. Maybe even a little funny right now. Everybody should start laughing.
    Carroll groped down his body with both hands, graphically scratching between his legs. A middle-aged woman turned away with obvious disgust.
    “Bayt-room?” Carroll convincingly slobbered, rolled his eyes back into his forehead. “Gotta go to the bayt-room!”
    A young bearded man and his girlfriend started laughing at a front table. Bathroom humor got the youth crowd every time.
    Hussein Moussa had stopped eating. His